“Goofy logic” from “Ray Rong,”
one critic charged. “The most ridiculous piece of journalism I have
read,” said another. “Trash” and “rubbish,” said others.
Those blasts came from angry environmentalists. They’re criticizing
a piece of news analysis I wrote recently, about an
environmental-health disaster in Libby, Mont. I intended it to be
provocative.
In that small town, more than a thousand
people are either ill, dying or already dead, because they inhaled
lethal asbestos fibers that spread from a nearby mine. Like many
journalists who’ve looked into it, I blamed the corporate
giant that ran the mine for decades, W.R. Grace & Co., along
with the government agencies, industry agents, and others who
allowed the town to get poisoned. But I also went further,
concluding that environmentalists could have done more to help the
asbestos victims.
Even then, environmentalists
engaged the issue for only a few years. From 1999 to around 2002,
they advocated for a pollution cleanup, and for medical care and
compensation for the victims. Then they again shifted their focus
to other issues, though the Libby victims continue to fight for
their rights in Congress, the agency bureaucracies and the courts.
Any generalization is at least a little inaccurate.
Environmentalists come in many stripes, and some are more concerned
for communities than others are. But Montana’s
environmentalists, like their fellows around the country, mostly
concentrate on wilderness, wildlife and other aspects of nature.
They oppose heavy-handed logging, dam-building and mining.
That’s part of what happened in Libby —
environmentalists pressed many lawsuits over the industries’
impacts on nature outside the town.
In the process,
environmentalists find themselves marooned on one side of a
cultural divide, with industrial workers and their families on the
other side. In Libby and nationally, voters have responded by
supporting anti-environmentalist politicians.
In the
feedback on my Libby piece, some environmentalists agree that their
side should’ve done more for Libby and other communities. But
I knew I would be jamming a stick into a hornet’s nest. Some
of the criticism is well-reasoned, but there’s a certain
strain that supports my conclusion.
“The
environmentalists were not responsible for the mine, the criminal
acts of its owners, the vitriol and hate hurled at them by the
citizens of Libby, the distrust and divisions in the community,”
said one environmentalist critic.
“Environmentalists
can’t take care of everyone,” said another.
Much of
the criticism shows outright disdain for the workers and families.
One letter-writer, the president of the board of a leading Montana
group, calls Libby “an ignorant and arrogant community that
actively and aggressively made it painfully clear that it wanted
nothing ever to do with (environmentalists) and their creative
efforts and factual information.”
Another said, “Mr. Ring
would have had us drop all (our) work on behalf of all species and
Creation, to help one small, hostile, pro-industry community intent
on running us out of Dodge, even as they rushed blindly over an
environmental cliff.” Libby’s workers and their families,
said another, are “a populace conditioned, on an integral,
invisible, even molecular level towards escapism and simplicity.”
Stupid locals? Well, they’re human beings. They
worked hard for generations, pulling ore from the mines and wood
from the forests. They toughed it out, in difficult, risky jobs,
and took pride. They didn’t see as far ahead as they should
have. Nobody’s perfect, even environmentalists.
One
environmentalist in my town, who holds two master’s degrees
from Yale University, approached me in a coffee shop to straighten
me out. He said I’m confusing the role of “environmental activists”
with the role of “community activists.” In his view, community
activists focus on the workers and families, while
environmentalists of course focus elsewhere.
That’s
precisely my point — there should be no difference.
Ray Ring is a contributor to Writers on the Range, a
service of High Country News in Paonia, Colorado
(hcn.org). He is the paper’s reporter in the field in
Bozeman, Montana.
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